BE-COBWEBBED
as is the face of England with railway lines, there still remain a
few tracts of land where the steel net-work is less closely woven.
This is notably the case in that triangular corner of the south of
Lincolnshire known as the Fens.

Taken
as a whole, that county is less familiar to the native or the visitor
than any other district of England. Save for its capital city, and an
isolated town here and there, Lincolnshire stands either strangely
outside the pale of intimate acquaintance or is known only to be
mis-known. Especially is this true of the Fens. Notwithstanding the
spread of knowledge and the increase of travel, nine persons out of
ten still probably labour under the delusion that "to live in
Lincolnshire means little short of floundering in a swamp and
shivering with ague." It is beyond question that "the Fens
have obtained a world-wide notoriety; and a general, though very
erroneous, impression prevails among those who do not know the
county, that this part of Lincolnshire is a dull and dreary land, to
be avoided by all except those whom necessity or the calls of
business compel to visit its unattractive scenery."

How
tenaciously an ill-reputation persists! To-day's opinion of the Fens
is little more than an echo of that entertained successively by the
Roman and Norman conquerors of Britain. Judging from casual remarks
in Tacitus and other Writers, when the Romans descended on Britain
this district was little more than a vast morass with a few scattered
islands on which the Fen folk passed a semi-amphibious existence. No
wonder the district became a camp of refuge for the Britons. The
hunted Britons, as Marcellinus records, "not dwelling in the
towns but in cottages within fenny places, compassed with thick
woods, having hidden whatsoever they had most estimation of, did more
annoyance to the wearied Romans than they received from them."

Centuries
later the Norman invaders were held at bay as their Roman forerunners
had been. When William the Conqueror had all the rest of England at
his feet, the Fens remained unsubdued. "What the rock and defile
were to the mountaineer, the reed field and mere were to the Fenman —
his home, the source of his subsistence, and his defence in seasons
of oppression or misfortune." Hither, then, as to a final
stronghold, resorted the last Saxon defiers of the Norman invaders.
"This land," as Dugdale noted, "environed with fens
and reed plecks was impassable; so that they feared not the invasion
of an enemy, and in consequence of the strength of this place, by
reason of the said water encompassing it, divers of the principal
nobility of the English nation had recourse unto it as their greatest
refuge against the strength and power of the Norman Conqueror."

WIND
AND WATER MILLS OF THE FENS

In
the annals of patriotism there are no more stirring pages than those
which tell how Here-ward, the last of the English, resisted the power
of William the Conqueror in the Fens of Lincolnshire. For seven long
years, as Kingsley tells, he and his stout-hearted followers held
their own against the Norman invader, and fought till there were none
left to fight. "Their bones lay white on every island in the
Fens; their corpses rotted on the gallows beneath every Norman keep;
their few survivors crawled into monasteries, with eyes picked out,
or hands and feet cut off; or took to the wild woods as strong
outlaws. . . . But they never really bent their necks to the Norman
yoke."

Romans
and Normans, then, had good cause to hold the Fens in abhorrence. But
that the evil repute of those far-off times should persist in these
changed and peaceful years is inexcusable. All those qualities which
made the Fens an ideal refuge for the oppressed have disappeared.
Long centuries ago they were dyked and drained, tilled and fenced,
until now they have "a beauty as of the sea, of boundless
expanse and freedom. For always, from the foot of the wolds,"
continues Kingsley, "the green flat stretched away, illimitable,
to an horizon where, from the roundness of the earth, the distant
trees and islands were hulled down like ships at sea. The firm
horse-fen lay, bright green, along the foot of the wold; beyond it,
the browner peat, or deep fen; and among it dark velvet alder beds,
long lines of reed-rond, emersed in spring and golden under the
autumn sun; shining river-reaches; broad meres dotted with a million
fowl, while the cattle waded along their edges after the rich
sedge-grass, or wallowed in the mire through the hot summer day. Here
and there, too, upon the far horizon, rose a tall line of ashen
trees, marking some island of firm rich soil. Here and there, too, as
at Ramsey and Crowland, the huge ashes had disappeared before the
axes of the monks, and a minster tower rose over the fen, amid
orchards, gardens, cornfields, pastures, with here and there a tree
left standing for shade, — 'Painted with flowers in the spring,'
with 'pleasant shores embosomed in still lakes,' as the
monk-chronicler of Ramsey has it, those islands seemed to such as the
monk terrestrial paradises. Overhead the arch of heaven spread more
ample than elsewhere, as over the open sea; and what vastness gave,
and still gives, such effects of cloudland, of sunrise and sunset, as
can be seen nowhere else within these isles."

Strangely
enough, it was not left to Kingsley to discover the beauty of the
Fens. Despite the popular impression that this district is "a
dull and dreary land," it would be possible to compile an
anthology in its praise. For example, so long ago as the twelfth
century Henry of Huntington wrote: "This fenny country is very
pleasant and agreeable to the eye, watered by many rivers which run
through it, and adorned with many roads and islands." Earlier
still William of Malmsbury described the Fens as "a very
paradise and a heaven for the beauty and delight thereof, the very
marshes bearing goodly trees. . . . There is such abundance of fish
as to cause astonishment to strangers, while natives laugh at their
surprise. Water fowl are so plentiful that persons may not only
assuage their hunger with both sorts of food, but can eat to satisfy
for a penny." Nor should the eulogy of Fuller be overlooked,
whose quaint verdict runs thus: "As God hath, to use the
apostle's phrase, tempered the body together, not making all eye or
all ear, but assigning each member the proper office thereof, so the
same Providence hath so wisely blended the benefits of this county
that, take collective Lincolnshire and it is defective in nothing."

Naturally,
neither of these encomiums touches upon just that characteristic of
the Fens which has the most potent charm for the visitor to-day. All
that Henry of Huntingdon, and William of Malmsbury, and Charles
Kingsley have written in praise of the peculiar natural beauty of the
Fens is strictly true; here may be enjoyed as sunny skies, as clear
starlight-nights, as gorgeous cloudscapes, as in any district of
England; but this peaceful, remote land has a more subtle attraction
still. Nowhere in England is it possible to come into such close
contact with a time and a people belonging so essentially to the
past. "Between us and the old English," as Froude has
remarked in sentences of rare charm, "there lies a gulf of
mystery which the prose of the historian will never adequately
bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagination can but feebly
penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the cathedral, only as we
gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some faint
conceptions float before us of what these men were when they were
alive; and perhaps in the sound of church-bells, that peculiar
creation of mediæval age, which falls upon the ear like the
echo of a vanished world."

Thanks
to its aloofness from the outside world, which is guarded by the
sparsity of railway communication, the Fen district of Lincolnshire
knows little of the changes wrought by the passing of time. ere the
centuries have followed each other in almost alterationless
succession. Since those years, remote in themselves, when the Fens
were drained, when these marshy acres were reclaimed from the
dominion of wide-spreading waters, when the wayward rivers were
restrained within high banks, and the haunts of fish and water-fowl
were transformed into golden cornfields, the aspect of the
countryside has known no change. For still longer years has this been
true of the handiwork of man.

To
visit Crowland in a sympathetic spirit is to step back into the
vanished world of the old English. Even if the pilgrim makes such a
concession to modern methods as to order his approach from the
nearest railway station, that railway station is so inconspicuous, so
slumberous for most of the day, and so soon out of sight and hearing,
that the dominance of the present need not persist for long. As he
traverses the miles of level Fenland that intervene it will be
strange if his spirit is not rightly attuned for the unalloyed
enjoyment which Crowland has in store. Far away on the horizon the
tall grey tower of Crowland Abbey rears itself out of a verdant
landscape, "a poem in stone, laden with ancient legend and
fraught with misty history." Nor will the wayfarer fail to be
impressed by that brooding silence which a sympathetic pilgrim noted
as the most striking quality of the district. "On every side the
level Fenland stretched broad as the sea, and to the eye appearing
almost as broad and free; and from all this vast lowland tract came
no sound except the hardly to be distinguished mellow murmuring of
the wind among the nearer sedges and trees. The river flowed on below
us in sluggish contentment without even an audible gurgle; no birds
were singing, and, as far as we could see, there were no birds to
sing; and in the midst of this profound stillness our very voices
seemed preternaturally loud."

CROWLAND
ABBEY

GRETFORD
HALL

On
the waters of that sluggish river, however, — the Welland which
moves ever on to the sea between its weed and willow-veiled banks —
the eye which has gazed upon the past can behold the shadowy outlines
of the barge which, nine centuries ago, bore the monk-attended bier
of Hereward to its rest in the minster of the Fens.

And
on by Porsand and by Asendyke, By
winding reaches on, and shining meres Between
grey reed-ronds and green alder-beds, A
dirge of monks and wail of women rose In
vain to Heaven for the last Englishman.

Nor
will the imagination rest on that picture as its remotest goal.
Passing lightly over the years it will gaze back four other
centuries, and recall how Guthlac, a brave yet gentle youth of the
royal race of Mercia, betook himself hither that he might make his
peace with God. Nigh twelve centuries have passed since this royal
recluse found a biographer through whose vivid pages we can
re-picture the "fen of unmeasured mickleness" to which
Guthlac fled. "There stretch out unmeasured marshes, now a swart
waterpool, now foul running streams, and eke many islands and reeds,
and hillocks, and thickets, and with manifold windings, wide and
long, it spreads out up to the northern sea."

ON
THE WELLAND

Equally
direct is the story this biographer tells to account for Guthlac
seeking refuge here. With his dawning manhood there came the memory
of the great deeds heroes had wrought, and he forthwith resolved to
emulate their exploits. So Guthlac gathered to his standard a troop
of daring spirits, and for nine winters he and his men ravaged the
country far and wide. But suddenly there came a change. "It
happened one night, on coming back from an outfaring, as he rested
his weary limbs, that he thought over many things in his mind, and he
was suddenly moved with the awe of God and his heart was filled
within with ghostly love; and when he awoke, he thought on the old
kings that were of yore, who, through mindfulness of wretched death
and the sore outgoing of a sinful life, forsook the world, and he saw
of a sudden vanish away all the great wealth they had, and his own
life hasten and hurry to an end, and he vowed to God that he would be
his servant, and arising when it was day signed himself with the sign
of Christ's rood."

In
such wise Guthlac became the founder of Crowland Abbey. At first he
sought refuge in the monastery at Pepton, but, resolving to become an
anchorite, it was not long ere he made enquiry as to some remote,
desolate spot to which he could retire. At this juncture he met a
Fenman named Tatwine, who painted an appalling picture of a secret
island known to himself. Many had attempted to inhabit it, so Tatwine
declared, "but could not for the strange and uncouth monsters
and several terrors with which they were affrighted." Apparently
Guthlac's interest in the place increased in proportion as Tatwine
depicted its gruesome qualities, and the graphic describer was at
length prevailed upon to convey the royal youth thither. It proved to
be a small island in the heart of the Fens, and here Guthlac built
himself a house and chapel, close to the site of the present
half-ruined Abbey.

Guthlac
took up his abode at Crowland in 697, and seventeen years later he
died. If his biographer is to be believed, the "strange and
uncouth monsters" resented his intrusion. Hardly had he built
his rude hut than, "being awoke in the night time, betwixt his
hours of prayer, as he was accustomed, of a sudden he discerned his
cell to be full of black troops of unclean spirits, which crept in
under the door, as also at chinks and holes, and coming in, both out
of the sky and from the earth, filled the air as it were with dark
clouds." Lest the sceptical should dismiss these unclean spirits
as mere figments of the imagination, the biographer gravely records
that they "first bound the holy man; and drew him out of his
cell, and cast him over head and ears into the dirty fen; and having
so done, carried him through the most rough and troublesome parts
thereof, drawing him amongst brambles and briers for the tearing of
his limbs."

But,
happily, there is a brighter side to Guthlac's life at Crowland. If
he had bad dreams, which were probably distorted recollections of the
cruelties he and his band had inflicted in their lawless raids, he
did not lack compensation. The ravens of the Fens were at his
command, and the fishes and the wild beasts. When talking one day
with his friend Wilfrith, two swallows suddenly flew into the room,
and perching now on the shoulders and anon on the breast and arms and
knees of Guthlac, filled the place with melody. To the surprised
enquiry of his visitor Guthlac answered, "Hast thou never
learnt, brother Wilfrith, in holy writ, that the wild deer and the
wild birds were nearer to him who hath led his life after the will of
God?"

Nor
was that all. In the less objective realm of spirit land the unclean
monsters were met for Guthlac by radiant opponents. Especially was
this so when he came to die. Though the "whirring arrow-storm"
of death smote hard on the anchorite's spirit, a visitant of light
enabled him to withstand the shock and fortified him for victory.
Even his breath in that hour of trial was "as the blowing herbs
in summer time, which — each in its own stead — winsome o'er the
meadows, dropping honey, sweetly smell."

Two
years after Guthlac passed away Ethel-bald, King of Mercia, built a
monastery to his memory, endowing it with the island of Crowland and
the adjacent Fenland. Several centuries later, however, that building
was destroyed by fire, thus making way for the present more enduring
structure, the foundations of which were laid in the early days of
the twelfth century. How greatly in the meantime the fame of Guthlac
and Crowland had increased is evident from the fact that two abbots,
two earls, one hundred knights and more than five thousand people
gathered for the laying of the first stone of the new abbey.

Seven
centuries have dimmed the architectural glory of Crowland Abbey.
Although Cromwell was here in the early days of the Civil War, his
presence being necessary to raise the siege of the place, for a rare
exception he is not saddled with responsibility for the decaying
condition of the building. That is probably accounted for by the
flowing of the tide of life elsewhere. One section of the building is
still in use as the parish church, but the glorious nave is a thing
of the past, only the gaunt framework of its massive walls surviving
to convey some suggestion of its spacious proportions. Time, too, has
wrought havoc with the west front of the building, the tracery of one
window having wholly disappeared and many of the surviving niches
been denuded of their figures. Notwithstanding these irreparable
losses, sufficient of this historic building remains to feed the
imagination and enable it to reconstruct unforgettable pictures of a
memorable past.

THE
TRIANGULAR BRIDGE, CROWLAND

Besides,
Crowland does not depend alone upon its Abbey for its power to
project the visitor back into the vanished world of the old English.
Within a stone's throw of the ancient minster, stranded high and dry
in the main street of this remote little town, is a relic of the past
the like of which can be seen nowhere else in the world. This is the
celebrated triangular bridge, perhaps the most interesting curiosity
in the annals of architecture. Some amusing and ingenious theories
have been advanced to account for the erection of such a singular
structure as a bridge with three arches having one centre for all.
But the solution of the problem is simple. Long centuries ago the
river Welland divided into two streams at this point, and as three
roads converged here the old builders surmounted the difficulty by
building an arch for each stream and combining the three arches at
what should have been the apex of each. This clever device is of
hoary antiquity; a charter of the remote year 943 makes mention of
Crowland's "triangular bridge;" but the present successor
of that novel structure was probably built in the fourteenth century.
As the causeway over the bridge is only eight feet wide, and moreover
exceedingly steep, it was obviously adapted for foot and horse
passengers only.

WEST
DEEPING CHURCH AND FONT

Wander
whither he will among the Fens of Lincolnshire the visitor need fear
no disturbance of that sense of communion with the past which
Crowland creates. Everything seems touched with "the golden
stain of time." Even such a building as Gretford Hall, the
mullioned windows of which have thrown their image into their watery
mirror since the days of Queen Elizabeth, seems a modern structure in
this land of ancient abbeys and churches and dwellings. No district
in England can excel the Fenland for the beauty and age of its
ecclesiastical architecture. Here a village will display a parish
church of the graceful early English period, there another keeps
careful custody of a rural temple which dates back to Norman times.

Nor
is it greatly different with the home dwellings of the Fen folk.
Those who builded for these peaceful people built for the centuries.
Generation after generation has known no other home than such as
greet the wayfarer wherever he wanders. Something, too, of the quiet,
confident stability of this unique countryside is suggested by the
sturdy, centuries-old bridges which span the frequent rivers. These
waterways also are a reflex of the lives spent by their reed-fringed
banks. Under the summer sky, in the radiance of moon or starlight,
and in the briefer gleam and longer gloom of winter days, their
flowing to the sea is ever "without haste, without rest."